Beyond a few last remnants of the list of necessary repairs following Hurricane Ida, the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office is largely back to where it was prior to the relentless storm.
“Mostly, it came down to property damage that had to be repaired,” said St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne of the local police recovery after the storm. “We had some skirmishes over insurance … some pretty severe damage to our storage shed … everything took a little damage, particularly the jail which had a metal roof that’s 20 years old. But it didn’t affect the inmates, and we were still operating.”
There was between $200,000 and $300,000 worth of lights damaged at Nelson Coleman Correctional Center in Killona, which has had temporary lights up since. The department’s shooting range was destroyed in the storm as well, though now there are overhangs once again in place and nearly all are back up.
“We’re waiting on insurance (on the lights), and once we get that squared away we’ll get all the lights (replaced) up at the jail. We haven’t been able to do as much as we’ve wanted to with the range since the storm, but we got through it,” Champagne said.
There are still more than a dozen St. Charles Parish police officers who still have not been able to return to their Ida-damaged homes. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, approximately 40 officers had homes rendered unlivable due to the damage inflicted. Some were forced to move out of the parish because of the complications that arose and aggravation from haggling with their respective insurance companies.
“Even so, nobody bailed. They came to work,” Champagne said. “We tried to do what we could to help make that easier. I’m proud of everyone.”
To that end, the Sheriff’s Office opened a temporary daycare center for its employees to allow for an easier return to work. The center opened at the police department’s training facility and was a response to a problem many employees were facing with schools and many daycare centers closed in the Ida aftermath.
Many Sheriff’s deputies were working 16 hours or more a day, and the center provided a measure of stress relief – also supported by the fact that with their children close by, they were able to visit with them periodically during a shift.
The center averaged between 30 to 36 children a day who were looked after by staff members who volunteered to be reassigned to the daycare after the storm. The selected employees working in the daycare had some type of experience ranging from either prior employment in childcare, or were parents or grandparents themselves with experience caring for children.
During the storm, Nelson Coleman remained operating, as opposed to moving inmates and personnel to an alternate site. The facility was built to withstand a Category 5 storm. Nelson Coleman would also host 40 inmates from St. Mary Parish. The storm came and went, staying longer than anyone would like. But outside of damage to the jail’s exterior, everything – and everyone –inside proved safe and sound through it all. The generators kept everything running, the power staying on for the duration of the event.
Once the storm passed, there were some notable incidents of looting, Champagne said, but nothing out of proportion.
“When you have it a week after a hurricane, it’s looting. Any other time, it’s theft,” Champagne said, noting 2021 actually yielded a record low in total crimes committed in the parish.
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